By Stephanie Estell, Wyoming Game & Fish Department

Kelsey Steenburgh with Virginia DWR

Developing Strategic Partnerships

Kelsey Steenburgh with Virginia DWR, this year’s ACI host agency, gave conference goers some insight into how to develop external partnerships. Her talk was titled Developing Strategic Partnerships: Amplifying Your Organization’s Reach. She began by defining what partnerships are — external organizations with common and shared goals to your organization which are mutually beneficial and share resources. Partnerships are an arrangement and can be either formal or informal. She was clear about what partnerships are not: vendors, contractors, one-time collaborators, industry peers and legislators.

Within strategic partnerships, governments typically provide expertise, resources, time and labor. If it is to be effective and productive, strategic partnerships require investment from both parties. They also need to be planned and measured. Most importantly, they need to be intentional.

Kelsey then shifted to amplifying brands and messaging. Utilizing partners can help us reach goals and audiences, increasing the reach for each organization. Working together, we can combine resources, including money, and increase the legitimacy of both partners. Each group can create more partners through the other’s existing network.

It is important for organizations to foster resiliency. Kelsey listed five elements organizations should strengthen: trust, authenticity, clear purpose and mission, values and quality products. If one of these categories is reduced for any reason, customers will stick around given the other four have a strong foundation. She gave examples of branding Virginia DWR has utilized, like partnering with local companies to create and sell relevant, branded products in their store. They also partnered with a Virginia brewery for a multi-year agreement with a shared goal of promoting local habitat work, which included product collaboration. Virginia DWR also created a program that provides grant money for organizations to promote shared goals.

As partners work together, communication is key. Maintaining information channels and keeping the other party updated supports the working relationship. This kind of communication can come through official channels, personal emails and phone calls, with personal communications being especially useful in relationship building. This method can also be one of the best ways to thank partners, as well as providing them with swag and recognizing partners publicly.

To finish up her talk, Kelsey gave the audience some action items to take back and implement in their agencies. She suggested that anyone looking to build strategic partnerships should begin by talking to colleagues about who they are already working with, ask how to help them and for their ideas. Getting out into the field, meeting current partners and seeing their work and projects was something she strongly encouraged. Utilize available technology to make things easy for partners, like branded toolkits they can plug into their own marketing. Recognize your partners and amplify your work with them. Ultimately, she encouraged everyone to understand the worth of their brand, be strategic in choosing partners and only work with partners of equal value.

During a brief Q&A following Kelsey’s presentation, she was asked about fundraising. Virginia DWR works with a foundation for donations for many of their events as they can not always accept funds directly. She was also asked about recognizing partners when they are numerous and how to do so equally. She acknowledged that recognizing all partners appropriately and equally remains a challenge for Virginia DWR. There are often many partners involved in a given event or product, so she suggested checking in with field personnel to try and cover your bases to make sure everyone is included.